From his place in the circle, Numeon turned, his eyes intense and pressing for an answer.

Shen’ra gave him one, solemnly.

‘He’s dead. The human didn’t make it.’

The low thwomp of turbine engines on minimum rotation provided a balm to Narek’s troubled thoughts. He was crouching in the troop hold of a Thunderhawk, leaning from one of its open side hatches and surveying Ranos through a pair of magnoculars. Two other gunships followed behind, similarly quietened.

‘Any sign?’ grated Amaresh. The Word Bearer sat with his long flensing blade in his lap, sharpening the edge.

He was a beast, Amaresh, literally, with those horns sprouting from his skull and through his battle-helm. One of the touched. An Unburdenedin the making.

‘Many,’ Narek replied, lowering the scopes to signal to Dagon, who was leaning out the opposite side of the transport, looking through his rifle’s targeter.

The other hunter slowly shook his head.

‘Any of our quarry?’ Amaresh pressed, annoyed at Narek’s little games.

‘I have their trail. It won’t be long now.’ He voxed fresh coordinates to their pilot and there was a slight change in engine pitch as the Thunderhawk shifted course.

Narek had taken the gunship along with the men.

Amaresh, Narlech, Vogel and Saarsk were all brutal warriors, bladesmen every one of them. Some had fought in the pits with the XII, locked swords with the likes of Kargos and Delvarus. That left Dagon, Melach and Infrik as snipers, along with himself. Infrik had cut out his own tongue, convinced it was babbling dark secrets to him in the night hours and during battle; whereas Melach found speech difficult with the growth of skin colonising his neck, slowly hardening to a brownish carapace, so said little.

The rest, those following in the other two gunships, were less significant to Narek’s plans.

He knew that they were unbalanced individuals, the seven he had chosen, but mental stability wasn’t amongst his criteria for selecting them. He wanted killers, specifically warriors who had slain other legionaries. The tally between this particular group was in the hundreds. That made them uniquely suitable for this mission.

With the exception of Dagon, whom he could tolerate, Narek hated every one of these bastards. Elias had cultivated a crop of dishonourable, wretched legionaries. Gone were days of righteous purpose and holy service. This slow mutation into devilry and aberration was all that was left now.

Narek meant to extricate himself from that as soon as he was done with this mission. Never once, not even when his leg was in bloody tatters, had he reneged on an oath. That was not about to change now.

As he hung on to the guide rail inside the hold, leaning out a little farther and allowing the wind whipping past to buffet him and howl around his battle-helm, he found that he missed the presence of the fulgurite and wondered just how the Dark Apostle would subvert its power.

Where once there was warmth at his side, a reminder of the existence of the divine, now there was only cold. Narek could feel it creeping further into his body, attaching its talons around his soul. And yet, so far he had resisted damnation.

Something on the darkened skyline got his attention and he quickly went back to the scopes for a better look.

‘There,’ he said, pointing.

Vogel got up and went to stand beside him. ‘I don’t see it.’

‘Look closer.’

Vogel’s eyes narrowed. One was not like the other. It was a fiery slit in an otherwise black retina, blind to one world but not the other.

‘A plume of smoke? There are fires burning everywhere in this city.’

‘It’s them,’ Narek assured him, opening up the vox again to converse with their pilot. ‘Saarsk,’ he said, ‘find us a place to land nearby.’

‘Why don’t we simply strafe their new stronghold,’ suggested Narlech, ‘then rake through the rubble to finish them?’

Narek shook his head. ‘No. I want to be sure they’re all present. Besides, ramping up our engines to attack speed would alert them to our presence. They have a weapon mount that took out two buildings. It would have no difficulty shooting us down, and then we would be the ones being searched for amongst the wreckage. We set down near here,’ he decided. ‘Go in slow and quiet on foot.’

Narlech muttered his agreement. Vogel sat back down.

‘It matters not to me,’ uttered Amaresh, who had not ceased sharpening his ritual blade since they had taken off. ‘So long as we get to cut them open and spill their fears at their feet, a feast for the Pantheon.’

Dagon snarled in pleasure at the thought. The others, too, all revelled in this idea.

Only Narek looked away, out into the dark, and wondered what would await them when they arrived.

Numeon sat in silence next to the slowly dying embers of the pyre. Tendrils of smoke were coiling from inside the armoured husks of his former brothers. He wondered how long it would be before it was him lying amongst the flames, burning and ending.

He was alone and the manufactorum floor was dark, barring the glow that remained in the ashes and charred pieces of wood. Only pausing to lay their dead to rest, the others were getting ready to move.

News of the human’s death had done little to affect the company. Most were in private agreement with Leodrakk. Now, this man, this John Grammaticus, would be left behind like the rest. And his secrets would die with him.

Numeon clasped an icon of a small hammer in his fist. It was partly fire-blackened, and the piece of chain that had once attached it to a suit of armour was broken.

‘I still have hope. I still believe you live…’ he said to the shadows. His eyes then strayed to the fire that filled the air around him with its crackling, reminding him of the day they had been wrested apart.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Misgivings

‘I can scarcely imagine what inspired Horus to this madness. In truth, the very fact of it frightens me. For if even the best of us can falter, what does that mean for the rest? Lord Manus will lead us in. Seven Legions against his four. Horus will regret this rebellion.’

– Vulkan,

Primarch of the Salamanders

Isstvan V

No one had seen Vulkan since he had returned from the meeting with his brothers aboard the Ferrum. Upon re-docking with the Fireforge, the primarch of the Salamanders had removed himself to his private chambers without a word of explanation.

Artellus Numeon had expected a briefing, even an address. Something. The ways of his primarch were as inscrutable as the very earth he was bound to. Numeon dearly wished that he could read Vulkan now, and wondered what had transpired aboard the Ferrumthat had vexed the primarch to such a degree. Less than an hour from planetfall, a veritable armada of Legion drop-ships berthed aboard the flagship vessel preparing to pierce Isstvan V’s upper atmosphere, it perturbed the Pyre captain greatly that his liege lord had absented himself.

Walking hurriedly down the shadowed corridors of the Fireforge, Numeon had yet to encounter a single soul. Vulkan had dismissed his chamber guards, all serfs and even his brander. So when the doors to Vulkan’s solitorium appeared through the soot-choked darkness of the ship’s lowest hold, barring the enginarium decks, Numeon did not know what to expect.

Though sealed, the entrance to Vulkan’s private chamber was not locked. Flickering lumen-torches cast a reddish haze over the doors, which parted at Numeon’s approach, revealing a deeper shadow within.

Crossing the threshold into the room, Numeon tried to still his thundering heartbeat as the reek of cinder and ash enshrouded him. Like the corridors outside, the solitorium was dark, but abjectly so. Numeon felt Vulkan’s presence before he saw him, as a man feels the presence of a monster when he is let into its cage.